The Internet can be a cruel place.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be any real movement to improve things.
But that could be changing on one major social media platform if The Verge is to be believed.
Meta’s crown jewel, Instagram, is reportedly testing a comment voting system that ranks user comments on a post. In theory, the article says, comments that continually receive downvotes would be ranked lower than other comments. And while such a system could be gamed, it is likely the “wisdom of the crowds” would prevail and negative sentiments would, for the most part, take a back seat to more positive comments.
In a post on Threads, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri writes: “Some of you may have seen that we're testing a new button next to comments on Instagram – this gives people a private way to signal that they don’t feel good about that particular comment. I want to be clear: this is a test, there is no dislike count, nor will anyone know if you tap the button. Eventually, we may integrate this signal into comments ranking to move disliked comments lower down. Our hope is that this might help make comments more friendly on Instagram.”
So far this is only being rolled out to a few people in an experiment but we might see it made standard if everything works out. The anonymity aspect is probably what will help this work as it gives people an incentive to voice their opinion without fear of some kind of retribution for doing so.
Any thoughts that you might have on a comment voting system are welcome in the comments.
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